Innovation Awards & Summit 2015

Overview

The Economist Events’ Innovation Awards & Summit 2015 explored new trends in business innovation—from Asia and around the world—and what they mean for Asia’s business leaders.

In 2015, The Economist gave innovation a reality check. As a foil to the idealism of Silicon Valley startup and venture-capital cultures, the summit focused on the challenges of innovating inside Asia’s established businesses.

The Economist’s 14th annualInnovation Awards, the only awards presented by the newspaper, will celebrate the individual innovators whose work has had the greatest impact on business and society. The awards will return to Hong Kong for a second year in Asia and will be presented at the Innovation Awards and Summit 2015 at JW Marriott Hong Kong on October 14th 2015.

Final awards winners will be announced every week from September. Scroll down to see awards winners and find more details viahere.

As part of the Innovation Awards & Summit, The Economist Events organised two competitions pre-event:

Audience testimonials

“Simply the best!” deputy consul general, Consulate General of Switzerland

“Sharp, to the point, balanced — just what The Economist delivers!” founder and managing director, Qiming Venture Partners

Speakers

David Miller

Chief Technologist, NASA

David Miller

Chief Technologist, NASA

David Miller began his term as the NASA chief technologist in March 2014. He serves as the agency’s principal adviser and advocate on NASA’s technology policies and programmes. NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist co-ordinates, tracks and integrates technology investments across the agency and works to infuse innovative discoveries into future missions. The chief technologist leads NASA’s technology transfer and technology commercialisation efforts, facilitating internal creativity and innovation, and works directly with other government agencies, the commercial aerospace community and academia.

Dr Miller serves as chief technologist through an intergovernmental personnel agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the Jerome C Hunsaker Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and was the director of the Space Systems Laboratory.

Most recently, he was the principal investigator for the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and a NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts fellow. He also recently served as the vice chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. He was the principal investigator for the Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, project on the International Space Station. He was also the co-principal investigator for the Middeck Active Control Experiment, which was flown on STS-67 and again on the International Space Station.

Dr Miller earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT, and has been part of the faculty there since 1997.

John Rice

Vice-chairman, GE

John Rice

Vice-chairman, GE

John G. Rice is the vice-chairman of GE and president and chief executive of the GE Global Growth Organization. In November 2010, the GE board of directors appointed him to lead the company’s global operations based in Hong Kong.

Mr Rice joined GE in 1978, serving in leadership roles in the company’s appliances and plastics businesses before becoming chief executive of GE Transportation Systems. Named chief executive of GE Energy in 2000, he rose to vice-chairman of GE and chief executive of GE Industrial, then vice-chairman of GE and chief executive of GE Infrastructure.

He holds a bachelor of arts in economics from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he now serves on the board of trustees. He is also a trustee of Emory University in Atlanta, and serves on several other boards including the international advisory board of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia and the board of the CDC Foundation in Atlanta.

Steve Monaghan

Regional director and head of edge (group innovation), AIA

Steve Monaghan

Regional director and head of edge (group innovation), AIA

Steve Monaghan is responsible for AIA’s group innovation agenda. Originally a commercial pilot, Steve Monaghan has held a number of senior corporate and banking roles in product, marketing, operations and general management. He has worked for leading corporations and financial institutions, including Dell, Compaq, Citigroup, OCBC, Shinsei Bank and DBS Bank. Throughout his career, Mr Monaghan has specialised in introducing new business models, businesses and products in all major markets in Asia and has filed six patents.

Mr Monaghan was on the start-up team for Dell Computer, introducing Dell’s consumer business to Asia. Later he developed and executed the branded manufacturing and retail model, catapulting Compaq to number one in the Indian consumer market. In banking he developed and patented the first mobile-payments platform for Citigroup, developed a consumer finance division for OCBC and led the retail bank turnaround of Shinsei Bank in Japan. As chief innovation officer for DBS Bank, Mr Monaghan drove the innovation agenda focused on intelligence, big data and social media.

He is a frequent presenter and lecturer around the world on innovation, banking, working capital, M&A and investing in China. He holds an EMBA from the Helsinki School of Economics.

R. Gopalakrishnan

Director, Tata Sons

R. Gopalakrishnan

Director, Tata Sons

R Gopalakrishnan (Gopal) has been a corporate leader for 31 years at Unilever and 17 years at Tata. He served in Jeddah as chairman of Unilever Arabia, in Bangalore as managing director of Brooke Bond Lipton and vice chairman of Hindustan Lever, and in Mumbai as executive director of Tata Sons.

Gopal has wide corporate and board experience over the last 25 years. Apart from serving as a director on the Tata group’s parent board, Tata Sons, and several group companies, he also serves as an independent director of listed companies Akzo Nobel India, Castrol India and Hemas Sri Lanka.

Gopal is an international speaker and is actively engaged in both instructional and inspirational speaking. He speaks on a range of subjects, including India, marketing, governance, strategy, organisational transformation and innovation, and conducts master-class sessions on subjects such as leadership and innovation. He relies on practical examples rather than theory or analytical frameworks.

Gopal is an author of four best-selling books; some have been translated into Chinese, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil. He is currently working on his fifth book. He studied physics at St. Xavier’s, Kolkata, and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. He is a past president of the All India Management Association.

Dong Wu

Head of innovation, Asia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson

Dong Wu

Head of innovation, Asia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson

Dong Wu is the head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Asia Pacific. He joined the Innovation team from Johnson & Johnson’s consumer business, where he was vice-president of R&D, responsible for the global engineering organisation and leading the transformation of the emerging markets R&D groups.

Mr Wu joined Johnson & Johnson as the head of emerging markets R&D, where he focused on developing personal-care products for emerging markets. He facilitated programmes aimed at developing high-value products and driving a culture of innovation. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, he held various positions in quality assurance, manufacturing, and research and development at Unilever.

He has a bachelor of science degree from Fudan University and an MBA from China Europe International Business School.

Michael Redding

Michael Redding

An accomplished executive with a track record of applying technology innovation to address business challenges, Mike Redding is the managing director of strategic technology innovation for Accenture. In this role he is responsible for a portfolio of strategic minority investments in growth-stage technology companies to support Accenture’s business strategy.
Mr Redding’s passion for bold ideas that produce game-changing results has been a constant theme over his more than 24 years with Accenture. He has incubated and launched technology innovations to clients across multiple geographies and industries including banking, mortgage lending, insurance, consumer packaged goods, retail, telecommunications and public-sector agencies. Mr Redding speaks frequently on the impact of emerging technology on large organisations across various client, industry and media forums.
Previously, Mr Redding served five years as the global managing director of Accenture Technology Labs, the dedicated technology R&D organisation of Accenture. In that role, he led a diverse team of technology experts across the five global Labs locations. He directed the investment in technology R&D, collaborated with Accenture’s largest clients on their innovation agendas and oversaw all Labs go-to-market activities.
He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University in 1988 and a master’s in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University in 1991. Mr Redding serves as a member of the board of directors for the Accenture Foundation.

Agenda

Registration and refreshments

8:45 AM

Conference vision

The chairmen introduce the summit’s vision and objectives, including The Economist’s view of innovation as “fresh thinking that creates value” for customers, stakeholders and society at large.Tom Standage, deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage

Deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage

Deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage is the deputy editor at of The Economist. He is also responsible for the newspaper's digital strategy and the development of new digital products, including Espresso and Economist Films. He is also the author of six history books, including Writing on the Wall (2013), A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2005) and The Victorian Internet (1998). He studied engineering and computing at Oxford University and has written for other publications including the New York Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Wired, taking a particular interest in the internet's cultural and historical significance. He joined The Economist as science correspondent in 1998 and was subsequently appointed technology editor, business editor and digital editor.

9:00 AM

In conversation: Corporate innovation in Asia: Does the Silicon Valley model matter?

With its established infrastructure and risk-capital markets, lenient bankruptcy laws and a culture that forgives failure, Silicon Valley is held up as the ideal model for creating innovation. But can those attributes be successfully imported into other jurisdictions? Do they make sense inside established organisations in other parts of the world?Most businesses in Asia do not see themselves as the next Uber, yet innovation gurus still implore them to think like start-ups. Innovation comes in many forms, and in this session, we will find out whether conglomerates in Asia need to innovate differently.Cultural differences inside large businesses, especially those operating in diverse markets, are in many cases incompatible with the agile, early-adopter dynamism of start-ups. From flat organisational structures to desk-side ping-pong, can the start-up style be made to gel with corporate culture? What lessons should business leaders take from Silicon Valley, and what should they ignore?We ask an Asian innovator to explain why the world should adopt the Silicon Valley model, and a Silicon Valley veteran whether Asian businesses have succumbed to “Silicon Valley envy”.Speaker
Michael Redding, managing director, strategic technology innovation, Accenture Technology Labs
Dong Wu, head of innovation, Asia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson
Arman Zand, founding partner, RedLion CapitalModerator
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, China business editor and Shanghai bureau chief, The Economist

Michael Redding

Michael Redding

An accomplished executive with a track record of applying technology innovation to address business challenges, Mike Redding is the managing director of strategic technology innovation for Accenture. In this role he is responsible for a portfolio of strategic minority investments in growth-stage technology companies to support Accenture’s business strategy.
Mr Redding’s passion for bold ideas that produce game-changing results has been a constant theme over his more than 24 years with Accenture. He has incubated and launched technology innovations to clients across multiple geographies and industries including banking, mortgage lending, insurance, consumer packaged goods, retail, telecommunications and public-sector agencies. Mr Redding speaks frequently on the impact of emerging technology on large organisations across various client, industry and media forums.
Previously, Mr Redding served five years as the global managing director of Accenture Technology Labs, the dedicated technology R&D organisation of Accenture. In that role, he led a diverse team of technology experts across the five global Labs locations. He directed the investment in technology R&D, collaborated with Accenture’s largest clients on their innovation agendas and oversaw all Labs go-to-market activities.
He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University in 1988 and a master’s in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University in 1991. Mr Redding serves as a member of the board of directors for the Accenture Foundation.

Dong Wu

Head of innovation, Asia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson

Dong Wu

Head of innovation, Asia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson

Dong Wu is the head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Asia Pacific. He joined the Innovation team from Johnson & Johnson’s consumer business, where he was vice-president of R&D, responsible for the global engineering organisation and leading the transformation of the emerging markets R&D groups.

Mr Wu joined Johnson & Johnson as the head of emerging markets R&D, where he focused on developing personal-care products for emerging markets. He facilitated programmes aimed at developing high-value products and driving a culture of innovation. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, he held various positions in quality assurance, manufacturing, and research and development at Unilever.

He has a bachelor of science degree from Fudan University and an MBA from China Europe International Business School.

Arman Zand

Founding partner, RedLion Capital

Arman Zand

Founding partner, RedLion Capital

Arman Zand has more than 15 years’ experience in global technology and innovation finance. Prior to founding RedLion Capital, Asia’s first technology venture debt fund, he was head of early-stage technology financing at SPD Silicon Valley Bank (SSVB), China’s first joint venture technology bank, which he helped co-found in 2012. Prior to SSVB, Mr Zand led Silicon Valley Bank’s lending effort in Asia, working closely with local venture capital firms, angels and seed funds to identify high-potential entrepreneurs. Before moving to Asia, he established SVB’s presence in Israel (2007) and India (2004). Mr Zand joined SVB in 2000 in Santa Clara to focus on providing financing solutions for early-stage, growth and publicly traded technology clients in Silicon Valley. He holds a bachelor’s degree in global economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Mr Zand currently resides in Shanghai.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran

US business editor, The Economist

Vijay Vaitheeswaran

US business editor, The Economist

Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is an award-winning senior correspondent for The Economist. His new book on the future of global innovation, published by Harper Collins, is "Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World's Most Wicked Problems". (www.needspeedgreed.com). He is currently the magazine's China business and finance editor. His editorial responsibilities range from business and finance to science, technology and innovation. He is an advisor on sustainability and innovation to the World Economic Forum, and a regular speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative. He teaches at NYU's Stern Business School, and his commentaries have appeared on NPR and the BBC, in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the New York Times. He joined The Economist editorial staff in 1992 as its London-based Latin America correspondent, and opened the magazine's first regional bureau in Mexico City.

9:40 AM

Disruption at the door – Intelligent machines and the future of the work

Until recently, many assumed that automation would only replace labour-intensive blue-collar jobs such as those in manufacturing. Now, the rise of smart machines also seems to threaten professional, middle-class jobs.The list of jobs predicted to be replaced by technology grows constantly: we now foresee driverless transport, teachers pushed out by online learning, and customer-service and care workers supplanted by emotion-registering robots. Business managers today must consider the possibility that risk-analysis, recruitment and investment algorithms will usurp their own roles.In this keynote, we set aside techno-fear mongering to find out how intelligent machines will affect how we work and the jobs that will exist in the coming decades.• Will these disruptions occur during our working lifetimes?
• Should business pre-empt these changes by creating new job structures and retraining staff today?
• How can societies prepare for the machine age’s likely impact on education, training and welfare?Speaker:
Nigel Cameron, president, Centre for Policy on Emerging TechnologiesModerator
Tom Standage, deputy editor, The Economist

Nigel Cameron

President, Centre for Policy on Emerging Technologies

Nigel Cameron

President, Centre for Policy on Emerging Technologies

Nigel Cameron is president and CEO of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, a nonpartisan think-tank in Washington, DC, focused on the long-term implications of new technologies. He was previously an associate dean and research professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he developed the first US centre on the business, policy and societal implications of nanotechnology.

In his writing and research, his chief focus has been the impacts of Moore's Law–driven technologies in social contexts for which exponential change is hard to imagine. In recent writing he addresses, in addition to nanotechnology, the global context for innovative technologies and human rights.

Dr Cameron is a commissioner of the US National Commission for UNESCO, chairing its Committee on Social and Human Sciences, and has represented the United States at meetings of UNESCO and the UN General Assembly, was nominated by the US as a special rapporteur at the Human Rights Council, and has testified at the US Congress, the European Parliament and the EU president's advisory group on ethics. He recently addressed the World Bank on the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on society and workforces. He has also served as an adviser to a range of technology companies.

Tom Standage

Deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage

Deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage is the deputy editor at of The Economist. He is also responsible for the newspaper's digital strategy and the development of new digital products, including Espresso and Economist Films. He is also the author of six history books, including Writing on the Wall (2013), A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2005) and The Victorian Internet (1998). He studied engineering and computing at Oxford University and has written for other publications including the New York Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Wired, taking a particular interest in the internet's cultural and historical significance. He joined The Economist as science correspondent in 1998 and was subsequently appointed technology editor, business editor and digital editor.

10:10 AM

Reality check: The retreat of the robots

Despite concerns discussed in the previous session about how intelligent machines will change work, in reality, progress toward the robotic revolution seems slow.Today’s most ubiquitous intelligent machines don’t resemble the android-style human-replacers thought to be on the horizon. As yet, artificial intelligence (AI) can only regurgitate ideas people have already dreamt up. It seems machines are far from being able to innovate on their own.In this session, we hear from businesses already using robots at work, to find out what value they bring to the organisation. We will find out where businesses are investing in intelligent machines and what the practical limitations of automation are today.Speakers:
Per Vegard Nerseth, CEO Robotics, ABB
Andy Pan, partner and vice president ecosystems, Da-Jiang Innovations
Dmitry Kaminskiy, senior partner, Deep Knowledge VenturesModerator
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, China business editor and Shanghai bureau chief, The Economist

Per Vegard Nerseth

CEO Robotics, ABB

Per Vegard Nerseth

CEO Robotics, ABB

Per Vegard Nerseth is senior vice-president and managing director for ABB’s robotics business unit, part of ABB’s discrete automation and motion division. Prior to this role, Mr Nerseth served as head of the business unit robot automation in ABB’s robotics division in Switzerland. He first joined ABB in 2003 as head of ABB Management Consultants in Norway. Since then he has held numerous management positions, including head of robotics in China and Norway.

Mr Nerseth holds a master of business administration from the University of Stirling, United Kingdom. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics from the Norwegian School of Management.

Andy Pan

Partner and vice president ecosystems, Da-Jiang Innovations

Andy Pan

Partner and vice president ecosystems, Da-Jiang Innovations

Andy Pan (Pan Nongfei), partner and vice-president of ecosystems at DJI, oversees efforts to expand the potential of drone technology via partnerships and ecosystem development. Prior to joining DJI, Mr Pan held several leading roles at WeChat, including hardware platform director, international regional director and product director. He also worked in engineering and international management roles for IBM-affiliated projects and Microsoft.

Dmitry Kaminskiy

Senior partner, Deep Knowledge Ventures

Dmitry Kaminskiy

Senior partner, Deep Knowledge Ventures

Dmitry Kaminskiy is Senior Partner at Deep Knowledge Ventures, a Hong Kong–based venture fund that merges science, technology and finance to disrupt existing industries and to create new ones. With a background in IT solutions, analytics and predictions for private banking and financial engineering, Mr Kaminskiy now applies his high-level technical capabilities to the challenge of increasing longevity. His work uses technology to analyse complex unstructured big data in biomedicine to find breakthrough therapies for age-related diseases.

Deep Knowledge Ventures focuses on high-level biomedical projects at the intersection of big data analysis. The firm invests in companies and initiatives working to extend peoples’ healthy and productive lifespans. Deep Knowledge Ventures has incorporated a unique decision-support system called VITAL, which is supervised by prototype artificial intelligence and used to guide investments in breakthrough personalised medicine companies.

Mr Kaminskiy is a trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation and he cofounded the Biogerontology and Regenerative Medicine Center at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He is deeply committed to supporting scientific advances in biomedicine, artificial intelligence and aerospace exploration.

10:50 AM

Networking break

11:15 AM

The Tiger’s Lair: Entrepreneurship challenge

In this session showcasing some of Asia’s most promising entrepreneurs, each of three finalists in the Tiger’s Lair challenge will have three minutes to present their business idea to our judging panel of market-leading investors. Experts in making multi-billion dollar decisions that drive industries, markets and economies, these judges will decide which ideas they would invest in and which they think will flop.We’ll hear from our judges on:• Which new products and ideas will disrupt businesses and markets in the coming years?
• Which industries have the most to gain?
• How quickly can these future trends be commercialised?Head judge
John Rice, vice-chairman, General ElectricJudging panel
James Zhang, venture partner, GRC SinoGreen Fund
Arman Zand, founding partner, Red Lion CapitalEntrepreneurs
Nicole Chan, director of communications, Bindo
Yasir Naveed, chief executive offiver, Chefo
Rajeev Krishnan, co-founder, PlayfiksModerator
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, China business editor and Shanghai bureau chief, The Economist

John Rice

Vice-chairman, GE

John Rice

Vice-chairman, GE

John G. Rice is the vice-chairman of GE and president and chief executive of the GE Global Growth Organization. In November 2010, the GE board of directors appointed him to lead the company’s global operations based in Hong Kong.

Mr Rice joined GE in 1978, serving in leadership roles in the company’s appliances and plastics businesses before becoming chief executive of GE Transportation Systems. Named chief executive of GE Energy in 2000, he rose to vice-chairman of GE and chief executive of GE Industrial, then vice-chairman of GE and chief executive of GE Infrastructure.

He holds a bachelor of arts in economics from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he now serves on the board of trustees. He is also a trustee of Emory University in Atlanta, and serves on several other boards including the international advisory board of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia and the board of the CDC Foundation in Atlanta.

James Zhang

Venture partner, GRC Sinogreen Fund

James Zhang

Venture partner, GRC Sinogreen Fund

James Zhang is a geneticist turned entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He was a founding partner and is currently an EIR at Formation 8, a Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm with over $1bn under management. He is also a senior adviser and venture partner of China-based GRC SinoGreen Fund and chief strategy officer of Centrillion Technologies, a Silicon Valley–based genomics company. Earlier, Dr Zhang was a venture capitalist at Softbank China Venture Capital and Khosla Ventures. Before becoming a venture capitalist, he was a biotechnologist and began his career as a co-founder of Mendel Biotechnology. He received his undergraduate training in biological sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China. He has a PhD in genetics from the University of California, Davis, and completed his post-doctoral and business training at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, respectively.

Arman Zand

Founding partner, RedLion Capital

Arman Zand

Founding partner, RedLion Capital

Arman Zand has more than 15 years’ experience in global technology and innovation finance. Prior to founding RedLion Capital, Asia’s first technology venture debt fund, he was head of early-stage technology financing at SPD Silicon Valley Bank (SSVB), China’s first joint venture technology bank, which he helped co-found in 2012. Prior to SSVB, Mr Zand led Silicon Valley Bank’s lending effort in Asia, working closely with local venture capital firms, angels and seed funds to identify high-potential entrepreneurs. Before moving to Asia, he established SVB’s presence in Israel (2007) and India (2004). Mr Zand joined SVB in 2000 in Santa Clara to focus on providing financing solutions for early-stage, growth and publicly traded technology clients in Silicon Valley. He holds a bachelor’s degree in global economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Mr Zand currently resides in Shanghai.

Yasir Naveed

Chief executive offiver, Chefo

Yasir Naveed

Chief executive offiver, Chefo

Yasir Naveed is the founder and CEO of Chefo. It is a sharing economy concept for food to benefit housewives and single mothers. His passion is to empower women to take control of their lives and bring positive change in the society. A Project Manager himself with appetite for homemade food, he has built Chefo with his talented team as a platform to connect homemade food enthusiasts with home chefs.

Rajeev Krishnan

Co-founder, Playfiks

Rajeev Krishnan

Co-founder, Playfiks

Rajeev Krishnan is the co-founder of Playfiks.com, a sports networking site and eco-system for people to connect, network, schedule and engage in sports and fitness activities across cities and countries.
Rajeev is an entrepreneur at heart and has been running a successful apparel sourcing business for ten years, servicing some of the biggest global brands in the sports and surf industry. The road to his entrepreneurship spans a career of 20 years in manufacturing, merchandising, marketing and management, from trainee to CEO.
His strengths include vision, strategy, execution and understanding global business cultures. He is a gold medallist and a graduate of history from Loyola college Chennai ( India).
Running, squash, yoga and healthy living form the core of his existence. Playfiks is a result of this passion and vision to bring people together on a common platform to connect, play and stay fit.

Nicole Chan

Director of communications, Bindo

Nicole Chan

Director of communications, Bindo

Nicole is the Director of Communications at Bindo, an intuitive iPad cloud-based Point-of-Sale solution that bridges brick and mortar stores with online commerce. Based in New York with regional Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong, Bindo won the 2014 Startup Asia competition and to date has received over US$3.8 million in VC funding to date. Prior to Bindo, Nicole served as the Editor for whitebook, a luxury publication distributed between Hong Kong, Singapore, Greater China & The Middle East (based in Shanghai.) Prior to that, she worked on digital initiatives for Standard Chartered Bank.

A Canadian-born Hong Kong native, Nicole is a graduate of Tufts University in Boston with a major in International Relations and Communications. Her articles on e-commerce and digital payments can be found online in such publications as e27, Small Business Digest, Retail Customer Experience and more.

12:05 PM

Solutions Lab: Measuring and financing innovation inside business

With competing claims on resources in most organisations, innovators must present a compelling case to secure backing for ventures, which are inherently uncertain and risky. In this session, we will examine how measuring innovation can support the business case for freeing up budgets and investing in innovation, with the aim of converting CFOs into VCs.We will hear from a business leader on their experience in financing and measuring corporate innovation, and explore their methodology, based on hundreds of live case studies, for structuring budgets and internal goals to encourage innovation across an organisation.Speaker
R. Gopalakrishnan, non-executive director, Tata Sons and head, Tata Group Innovation ForumModerator
Tom Standage, deputy editor, The Economist

R. Gopalakrishnan

Director, Tata Sons

R. Gopalakrishnan

Director, Tata Sons

R Gopalakrishnan (Gopal) has been a corporate leader for 31 years at Unilever and 17 years at Tata. He served in Jeddah as chairman of Unilever Arabia, in Bangalore as managing director of Brooke Bond Lipton and vice chairman of Hindustan Lever, and in Mumbai as executive director of Tata Sons.

Gopal has wide corporate and board experience over the last 25 years. Apart from serving as a director on the Tata group’s parent board, Tata Sons, and several group companies, he also serves as an independent director of listed companies Akzo Nobel India, Castrol India and Hemas Sri Lanka.

Gopal is an international speaker and is actively engaged in both instructional and inspirational speaking. He speaks on a range of subjects, including India, marketing, governance, strategy, organisational transformation and innovation, and conducts master-class sessions on subjects such as leadership and innovation. He relies on practical examples rather than theory or analytical frameworks.

Gopal is an author of four best-selling books; some have been translated into Chinese, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil. He is currently working on his fifth book. He studied physics at St. Xavier’s, Kolkata, and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. He is a past president of the All India Management Association.

Tom Standage

Deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage

Deputy editor, The Economist

Tom Standage is the deputy editor at of The Economist. He is also responsible for the newspaper's digital strategy and the development of new digital products, including Espresso and Economist Films. He is also the author of six history books, including Writing on the Wall (2013), A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2005) and The Victorian Internet (1998). He studied engineering and computing at Oxford University and has written for other publications including the New York Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Wired, taking a particular interest in the internet's cultural and historical significance. He joined The Economist as science correspondent in 1998 and was subsequently appointed technology editor, business editor and digital editor.

12:30 PM

Networking lunch

1:50 PM

Is the public sector more innovative than business?

Much of the excitement around innovation focuses on commercial success in global markets, but in some places the public sector is thought to be more innovative than the private. In these cases, value is measured not by profit and market share, but in terms of improving the lives of citizens and stakeholders.Economist Mariana Mazzucato takes this idea further, suggesting that it is not the private sector that has created an innovation revolution, but governments—who we should credit for investing in the risky advances that have created growth.In this session, we will find out just how innovative the public sector can be:• What can businesses learn from the way social enterprise does innovation, often on a shoestring budget?
• How can leaders spur sluggish institutions to create value?
• How do heavily regulated sectors like healthcare, education and government incentivise innovation in the absence of market forces like competition?Speakers:
Dr Frank Tong, CEO, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute
Dr David Miller, Chief Technologist, NASA
Dato’ Sri Dr. Noorul Ainur Mohd. Nur, secretary general, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Malaysia
Mariana Mazzucato, professor in economics of innovation, University of Sussex (by videolink)Moderator
Tom Standage, deputy editor, The Economist

Frank Tong

CEO, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute

Frank Tong

CEO, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute

Prior to joining ASTRI, Frank Tong was the deputy general manager and chief technology officer of Hisense Broadband Multimedia Technologies Co and chief executive officer of Archcom Technology, a subsidiary of Hisense. Before joining Hisense in February 2013, he was a vice-president of SAE Magnetics (HK), a wholly owned subsidiary of TDK Corporation. During his eight-year tenure at SAE, he was the pioneer in the establishment of its optical component business unit. Mr Tong took up the position of head of the optical communications component group at ASTRI in 2001, under a secondment arrangement with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). While at ASTRI, he brought to fruition in 2004 SAE’s acquisition of his research team as well as the technologies his team developed, making it the first successful spin-off case of a government-funded research and development centre.

Earlier in his professional life, Mr Tong had a successful sojourn at IBM Research from 1987 to 1996, first working on blue-green emitting solid-state lasers for optical recording and later on multi-wavelength optical communications modules and systems. He received numerous awards from IBM, including the prestigious IBM Outstanding Innovation Award in 1995.

He was a professor at the Information Engineering Department of CUHK from 1996 to 2004. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of the same department. Mr Tong obtained his PhD degree from Columbia University in 1987 and conducted his thesis research at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the US.

Mr Tong has been very active in community and professional activities. Apart from serving as a director of the ASTRI board from March 2012 to May 2014, he was also a consultant to several local and international companies, including Lucent Technologies in 2000. From 1993 to 2004 Dr Tong was an associate editor for IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, and served as programme chairman and technical committee member for numerous conferences. He has authored and co-authored about 200 papers and was awarded 19 patents.

David Miller

Chief Technologist, NASA

David Miller

Chief Technologist, NASA

David Miller began his term as the NASA chief technologist in March 2014. He serves as the agency’s principal adviser and advocate on NASA’s technology policies and programmes. NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist co-ordinates, tracks and integrates technology investments across the agency and works to infuse innovative discoveries into future missions. The chief technologist leads NASA’s technology transfer and technology commercialisation efforts, facilitating internal creativity and innovation, and works directly with other government agencies, the commercial aerospace community and academia.

Dr Miller serves as chief technologist through an intergovernmental personnel agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the Jerome C Hunsaker Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and was the director of the Space Systems Laboratory.

Most recently, he was the principal investigator for the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and a NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts fellow. He also recently served as the vice chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. He was the principal investigator for the Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, project on the International Space Station. He was also the co-principal investigator for the Middeck Active Control Experiment, which was flown on STS-67 and again on the International Space Station.

Dr Miller earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT, and has been part of the faculty there since 1997.

Dato’ Sri Dr. Noorul Ainur Mohd. Nur

Dato’ Sri Dr. Noorul Ainur Mohd. Nur

Noorul Ainur Mohd. Nur is the secretary-general of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in Malaysia. Formerly, she was the secretary-general of the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (2010–14). Ms Noorul Ainur has more than 34 years of experience in the public sector spanning across key ministries, including the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Infor¬mation and National Institute of Public Administration, Malaysia (INTAN). As an expert specialising in the fields of development, economics and administration, she served as senior adviser in the South-east Asia group for the World Bank in Washington, DC, from 2006 to 2008.
Her significant contributions to social transformation led to her appointment as vice-president of the Intergovernmental Council of the Management of Social Transformations programme of UNESCO for the Asia and Pacific region (2013–15). Most recently, Ms Noorul Ainur was elected as the chairman of the Natural Sciences Commission, a first for Malaysia, for the forthcoming 38th UNESCO General Conference to be held in November 2015.
Ms Noorul Ainur obtained her PhD in political science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She was also a Goldman Sachs visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford in 2002.

Mariana Mazzucato

Professor in economics of innovation, University of Sussex

Mariana Mazzucato

Professor in economics of innovation, University of Sussex

Mariana Mazzucato holds the RM Phillips chair in the Economics of Innovation at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. She has held academic positions at the University of Denver, London Business School, Open University and Bocconi University. Her recent book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths (Anthem, 2013), was on the 2013 Books of the Year list of the Financial Times. It focuses on the need to develop new frameworks to understand the role of the state in economic growth—and how to enable rewards from innovation to be just as “social” as the risks taken. Ms Mazzucato is winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI (Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute) Prize in Political Economy, and in 2013 the New Republic called her one of the three most important thinkers about innovation.

2:35 PM

In conversation: The serious business of corporate innovation

How to embed new ways of creating value in existing and sometimes out-of-date business models is a perennial question for many business leaders. In this session, we’ll hear from some of Asia’s leading CEOs about their experiences of innovating within businesses in a variety of sectors.• How can CEOs balance shareholders’ and investors’ interest in short-term returns with the need for longer-term investment in innovation?
• How do they integrate innovative acquisitions or R&D satellites into established workforces?
• In what ways can an organisation’s financial goals be realigned to support innovation initiatives?
• Can these chief executives also claim to be their organisation’s chief innovator?Speaker:
John Rice, vice-chairman, General Electric
Ong Chih Ching, chairman and executive director, KOP Limited
Anish Shah, group president strategy, Mahindra GroupModerator
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, China business editor and Shanghai bureau chief, The Economist

John Rice

Vice-chairman, GE

John Rice

Vice-chairman, GE

John G. Rice is the vice-chairman of GE and president and chief executive of the GE Global Growth Organization. In November 2010, the GE board of directors appointed him to lead the company’s global operations based in Hong Kong.

Mr Rice joined GE in 1978, serving in leadership roles in the company’s appliances and plastics businesses before becoming chief executive of GE Transportation Systems. Named chief executive of GE Energy in 2000, he rose to vice-chairman of GE and chief executive of GE Industrial, then vice-chairman of GE and chief executive of GE Infrastructure.

He holds a bachelor of arts in economics from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he now serves on the board of trustees. He is also a trustee of Emory University in Atlanta, and serves on several other boards including the international advisory board of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia and the board of the CDC Foundation in Atlanta.

Ong Chih-Ching

Executive chairman and executive director, KOP

Ong Chih-Ching

Executive chairman and executive director, KOP

Ong Chih Ching is the executive chairman and executive director of KOP Limited. She is responsible for the company’s vision, development and strategic planning.

Prior to the reverse takeover, Ms Ong was the chairman and co-founder of KOP Properties and KOP Group. She was responsible for a number of ground-breaking real estate projects including the Ritz-Carlton Residences, Singapore, Cairnhill, the first Ritz-Carlton-branded private residences outside of North America; Hamilton Scotts, Singapore, an iconic residential tower with sky-garages; multi-award-winning Montigo Resorts hospitality brand with two resorts in Indonesia, Nongsa, Batam, and Seminyak, Bali; and Winterstar Shanghai, an integrated winter-themed resort featuring an Olympic-grade indoor ski-slope and winter sports facility.

She was named among Forbes Asia magazine’s 50 Power Business Women in Asia in 2014 and 2015 and was also named Outstanding Entrepreneur at the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards 2014 by Enterprise Asia.

Anish Shah

Group president strategy, Mahindra Group

Anish Shah

Group president strategy, Mahindra Group

Anish Shah is the group president (strategy) for the Mahindra Group. His key focus areas are developing and implementing strategy, building capabilities such as digitisation and analytics, and driving international growth, especially in the US and Africa. The group strategy office also leads risk management and performance review, and enables synergies across group companies.
Prior to joining Mahindra in 2014, Mr Shah was president and CEO of GE Capital India, where he led the transformation of the business, including a turnaround of its SBI Card joint venture. His career at GE spanned 14 years. As director of global mortgage, he worked across more than 30 countries to drive growth and manage risk, and as senior vice-president of marketing and product development at GE Mortgage Insurance, he led various growth initiatives and played a key role in preparing the business for an IPO, as a spin-off from GE. Mr Shah received GE’s prestigious Lewis Latimer Award for outstanding utilisation of Six Sigma in developing a “digital cockpit”. Before GE, he worked at Bank of America, Bain & Company and Citibank.
Mr Shah holds a PhD from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, where his doctoral thesis was in the field of corporate governance. He also received a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon and a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

3:15 PM

Networking break

3:40 PM

The Economist debates: Can Asia’s established firms evolve?

Economic conditions, social trends and new technologies are constantly changing the environment in which businesses operate. And, many commentators argue that the pace of change is increasing. In this session we pit the old guard against the new to discuss whether Asian businesses are keeping up.We’ll hear from innovators at both ends of the business spectrum – the bright young startups launching onto the scene and shaking up established industries, on the one hand. And, on the other, the view from one of Asia’s most established corporate giants - a dinosaur that has learnt to dance.Established businesses arguably have more resources to innovate and experiment with new ideas, but are they hungry enough to make the risky leaps ahead required for survival?A groundswell of startups and entrepreneurs is burgeoning across Asia, not just in the tech-entrenched markets like China, India, Hong Kong and Korea but also across South East Asia in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Can the new guard leapfrog the cumbersome and expensive business practise of the past to take the lead? We’ll put the contention to our panellists that Asia’s most innovative firms are those that have been around the longest.Speakers
Steve Monaghan, regional director and head of edge (group innovation), AIA
Cheryl Yeoh, chief executive officer, Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity CentreModerator
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, China business editor and Shanghai bureau chief, The Economist

Steve Monaghan

Regional director and head of edge (group innovation), AIA

Steve Monaghan

Regional director and head of edge (group innovation), AIA

Steve Monaghan is responsible for AIA’s group innovation agenda. Originally a commercial pilot, Steve Monaghan has held a number of senior corporate and banking roles in product, marketing, operations and general management. He has worked for leading corporations and financial institutions, including Dell, Compaq, Citigroup, OCBC, Shinsei Bank and DBS Bank. Throughout his career, Mr Monaghan has specialised in introducing new business models, businesses and products in all major markets in Asia and has filed six patents.

Mr Monaghan was on the start-up team for Dell Computer, introducing Dell’s consumer business to Asia. Later he developed and executed the branded manufacturing and retail model, catapulting Compaq to number one in the Indian consumer market. In banking he developed and patented the first mobile-payments platform for Citigroup, developed a consumer finance division for OCBC and led the retail bank turnaround of Shinsei Bank in Japan. As chief innovation officer for DBS Bank, Mr Monaghan drove the innovation agenda focused on intelligence, big data and social media.

He is a frequent presenter and lecturer around the world on innovation, banking, working capital, M&A and investing in China. He holds an EMBA from the Helsinki School of Economics.

Cheryl Yeoh

Cheryl Yeoh

Cheryl Yeoh is chief executive officer of the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC). MaGIC’s mission is to catalyse the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Malaysia. Prior to returning to Malaysia, Ms Yeoh spent 12 years in the US, most recently in Silicon Valley where her company, Reclip.It, was acquired by Walmart Labs in 2013. She was named among the Top 44 Female Founders Every Entrepreneur Should Know 2012 by Mashable and won the 2012 Top 10 Women in Digital Award by L'Oréal. Passionate about helping other entrepreneurs, Ms Yeoh serves as a mentor and speaks on relevant panels, workshops and events.

4:20 PM

Winners Panel: The Economist’s 2015 Innovation Award winners

The Economist will present its annual innovation awards to world-class innovators whose successes are both fascinating and inspiring. In this panel session, winners will share the stories of their unique struggles to succeed, and talk about the challenges common to innovators in diverse industries.Speakers
Michael Sofia, Chief Scientific Officer, Arbutus Biopharma
Shannon May, co-founder, Bridge International Academies
Sam Gellman, general manager, Hong Kong, UberModerator
Tom Standage, deputy editor, The Economist

Michael Sofia

Chief Scientific Officer, Arbutus Biopharma

Michael Sofia

Chief Scientific Officer, Arbutus Biopharma

Michael Sofia is currently chief scientific officer at Tekmira/OnCore, a company focused on the discovery and development of therapies to treat hepatitis B. Previously he was CSO and co-founder of OnCore Biopharma, which merged with Tekmira in March 2015. He also holds a professorship at the Baruch S Blumberg Institute and an adjunct professorship at the Drexel University School of Medicine.
Prior to founding OnCore Biopharma, Mr Sofia was senior vice-president of chemistry and senior adviser at Gilead Sciences, and senior vice-president of chemistry at Pharmasset, until Pharmasset’s acquisition by Gilead in January 2012. Earlier, Mr Sofia held the position of group director, new leads chemistry, at Bristol-Myers Squibb and was vice-president of research at Intercardia Research Labs (formerly Transcell Technologies). He also held research positions at Eli Lilly and Co and at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research.
He completed his post-doctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry as an NIH fellow at Columbia University and received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He earned his BA degree in chemistry from Cornell University.
Mr Sofia has introduced numerous drugs into clinical development for the treatment of infectious and inflammatory diseases. He has authored more than 100 publications, nine book chapters and numerous abstracts and is an inventor on more than 35 US patents and numerous patent applications. He is the principal inventor of sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), currently marketed as a treatment for the cure of HCV infection. Mr Sofia is the recipient of the 2014 Pennsylvania Bio Scientific Achievement Award for the discovery of sofosbuvir and was recognised by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2014 Global Thinker for his contributions to the discovery of a cure for HCV.

Shannon May

Co-founder, Bridge International Academies

Shannon May

Co-founder, Bridge International Academies

Shannon May is co-founder and chief strategy and development officer at Bridge International Academies. Ms May is an advocate for children, dedicated to ensuring that education policy and provision are focused on children and learning outcomes. In her work for Bridge, she is a data-driven designer. She leads teams to deliver operational excellence across various industries, from construction to marketing. She and her partner, Jay Kimmelman, devised the idea of Bridge while she was teaching in rural China and witnessing the pervasive effects of low-quality schooling for the world’s poorest. Ms May uses her own teaching experience to bring insight to Bridge’s fast-growing operations across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and India. She received her BA, magna cum laude, in social studies from Harvard University, and her PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sam Gellman

General manager, Hong Kong, Uber

Sam Gellman

General manager, Hong Kong, Uber

5:00 PM

Chairman’s closing remarks

Venue

Refined luxury and modern convenience blend seamlessly here at the JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong. Boasting a central location in the Admiralty area of the city, atop Pacific Place Mall and moments from the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, the hotel welcomes you to the luxury accommodation and you will enjoy free Wi-Fi access and 24-hour room service, relax with a dip in the heated outdoor pool, and choose from eight on-site restaurants, bars and lounges, each with its own distinct personalities.

Sponsors

Platinum sponsor

Huawei

Gold sponsor

Shenzhen Fountain Corporation

Shenzhen Fountain Corporation is an innovation company in the Energy & Environment sector and is mainly engaged in carbon transformation efforts along its main businesses, which include sustainable real estate development, alternative transportation concepts and waste to carbon technologies. SFC aims to bring to market pragmatic transformative carbon business models.

Silver sponsor

Silver sponsor

Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company with over 336,000 people servicing in 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture helps clients to become high-performance businesses and governments. For more information, visit www.accenture.com.

Silver sponsor

AIA

AIA Group Limited and its subsidiaries comprise the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group with a presence in 18 markets in Asia-Pacific. It is a market leader in the Asia-Pacific region (ex-Japan) based on life insurance premiums and holds leading positions across the majority of its markets. It had total assets of US$172 billion as of 31 May 2015.

Founding sponsor

Founding sponsor

Guanghua-Kellogg Executive MBA Program

The Guanghua-Kellogg Executive MBA Program is a joint program between the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. This program provides executive-level management education to international business leaders who do business in China and Chinese business leaders looking to expand operations overseas.

Supporting organisation

DoubleDutch

Supporting organisation

AmCham HK

Supporting organisation

CanCham Hong Kong

Supporting organisation

British Chamber of Commerce Singapore

Supporting organisation

Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation

Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation is a statutory body that strives to transform Hong Kong into the regional hub for innovation and technology development. The Corporation has been carefully building a tech-based ecosystem that connects stakeholders, nurtures talent, facilitates collaboration, and drives innovation to commercialisation.

Enquiry

Innovation Awards

The Economist showcases creative individuals who dream up new ideas and turn them into reality. Since 2002, this initiative has recognised the work of the world’s leading entrepreneurs, thinkers, creators, scientists and innovators. This year The Economist will hold fourteenth annual Innovation Awards, the only awards presented by the newspaper. For more information, pleaseclick here.

Speaking opportunities

Sponsorship opportunities

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